An Audit Report on the Court of Criminal Appeals' Administration of Grant Funds from the Judicial and Court Personnel Training Fund
April 2009
Report Number 09-028
Overall Conclusion
The Court of Criminal Appeals (Court) should improve its administrative processes to ensure that grants from the state Judicial and Court Personnel Training Fund (judicial education program) are used efficiently and effectively and that grantees are held accountable for providing agreed-upon services.
The Court awarded 8 judicial education program grants totaling $8.44 million in fiscal year 2007 and 7 grants totaling $8.47 million in fiscal year 2008. According to the Court's records, a total of 204,443 training hours were provided to 16,437 participants in fiscal year 2008. The Court has processes to ensure that grantees' requests for funds are reviewed and do not exceed the grantees' total award amounts.
The Court should develop written policies and procedures for its financial monitoring of judicial education program grants and expand the scope of its financial monitoring of grantees. Although the Court's staff reports that it reviews 100 percent of grant expenditures, it does not limit the amount of grant funds that can be expended on grantee administrative costs. Grantees' administrative expenditures in fiscal year 2008 ranged from 36.5 percent to 75.1 percent, with an average administrative expenditure rate of 49.5 percent across the seven grantees. The Court also should improve its financial monitoring by requiring grantees to report budget-to-actual expenditures and ensuring that audits of state and non-state funds are conducted as required by the grant provisions.
The Court also should develop written policies, procedures, and performance measures to monitor grantees' program performance. The number of training events proposed by grantees varied from the actual number of training events they conducted. These variances ranged from the grantees providing 8 fewer events than they proposed to providing 17 more events than they proposed. The Court also should improve its program monitoring by analyzing training participant evaluations to assess the quality of the training provided by the grantees. Without implementing performance standards and monitoring grantee performance, the Court cannot effectively ensure that grantees comply with grant agreements or use state funds efficiently.
The Court lacks formal, written policies and procedures for awarding and administering grants. While the Court ensures that grant applications considered for evaluation are substantially complete, it does not document the rationale it uses to make award decisions. In addition to $16.9 million in judicial education program grants, the Court reported that it awarded approximately $171,626 in supplemental grants during fiscal years 2007 and 2008; however, the Court did not have a written agreement to document the purposes and amounts of supplement grants awarded. As a result, the Court could not ensure that these supplemental grant funds were used as intended. Also, these supplemental grants were awarded through a noncompetitive process.
The Court's Education Committee is required by Texas Government Code, Section 56.005, to provide curriculum recommendations to the Court. However, the Court could not provide any documentation showing that the Education Committee had formally met or issued an annual report of recommendations since the committee was created in fiscal year 2004. As a result, the Court primarily relies on the grantees' curriculum committees to identify training needs of state judicial and court personnel.
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